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A group of bicyclists ride past the cornfields on DeWitt Road as DALMAC riders began their journey Wednesday morning after leaving East Lansing. Photo taken 8/27/2014 by Greg DeRuiter/Lansing State Journal(Photo: Greg DeRuiter)

When Dick Allen and a handful of companions staged the first Lansing-to-Mackinaw bicycle tour more than four decades ago, Michigan roads were anything but bike-friendly.

"We had encounters with people," the former longtime state legislator recalled Tuesday. "At that time, it was very unusual to see other bicycles on the roads. We had people blowing their horns. Somebody threw a banana peel at us."

One sheriff's department even offered to give them a ride across the county because it didn't want bicycles clogging up the roadways, he said.

From those loosely planned beginnings grew the Dick Allen Lansing to Mackinaw bike tour, now one of the better-known bicycle tours in the country.

More than 1,630 riders from 30 states and Canada depart from East Lansing today and Thursday from the MSU Pavilion to begin their trek and are pedaling their way to the Mighty Mac.

"People come back year after year because they see the same people," said Patricia Trudgen, events director for the Tri-County Bicycle Association, which sponsors DALMAC. "They come from all walks of life. They are out there because they love the idea of riding a bike."

This year, riders will use four routes ranging from 290 to 411 miles, including two that cross the Mackinac Bridge and one that continues on to Sault Ste. Marie.

The 5-day east route is new this year. It was expanded from four days and runs up the center of the state, much like the original DALMAC tour.

Riders on the 5-day Upper Peninsula route will get a rare opportunity: The route includes a 15-mile stretch of Interstate-75 that remains closed to vehicle traffic because of construction. That's never happened before, organizers said.

DALMAC Fund has raised $1.2M for biking-related causes

The DALMAC tour isn't one of the longest in the country or even the Midwest. But it's one of the least expensive tours of its type, Trudgen said. The most expensive route costs $230.

Riders camp at schoolyards along the routes. Their gear is ferried in trucks driven by volunteers, which also transport bikes back to East Lansing. Riders can travel back home by bus or arrange other transportation.

"We've been doing it so many years, we have it orchestrated quite well," Trudgen said.

Part of the proceeds from the tour go into the DALMAC Fund, which has awarded more than $1.2 million in grants to biking-related causes over the past 29 years. More than $80,000 was awarded to local groups this year.

Most riders are men, and the average age is a shade over 50, the TCBA said.

On any given year, about a fourth of all participants are first-timers. But many have been been riding on the tour for years and have plenty of stories to share around camp.

"There was the time when we got seven inches of rain in one night," said Katie Donnelly, who is riding in her 21st DALMAC and serves as the tour's media coordinator.

"That's part of the culture of the bike tour — the war stories. They'll talk about what happened back in such-and-such a year, when they had to sleep in the school or their tent went floating down the parking lot."

Darryl Burris, the current president of TCBA, has more than 30 DALMAC tours under his belt.

"We've had everything from hypothermia-inducing cold to extreme heat, strong head or tail winds, rain storms, even a little bit of sleet," he said.

"Everything that can happen during an event has happened. One year, a route got into camp and the caterer had been given the wrong day and there was no food. We have a crew to deal with those kinds of things, and they got on the phone and called (restaurants) and said, 'start sending over food.'"

Tour had humble beginning

The 81-year-old Allen, who still rides in the DALMAC, said he hatched the idea in 1971 after he introduced legislation to create a Great Lakes shoreline route and took flak from colleagues who said bikes couldn't co-exist with motor vehicles.

"We decided to demonstrate (bikes) belong on roads," he said. "We picked up a few friends, set out from the Capitol and rode to Mackinaw. My wife brought along a little camper. We went up Old 27. That was the only way I knew. We just took off."

Fewer than a dozen people did the inaugural tour, he said.

"It was a casual, friendly type of thing," he said. "We thought we were doing something significant, in a way. But in another way, it was just a group of people out for fun. The second year, it got picked up by the Ann Arbor paper and some people from Ann Arbor showed up. By the third or fourth year, we had a big parade through town."

Last year, DALMAC riders wore jerseys that said, "The Legend Turns 80." Allen rode with a group of more than two dozen people, including his children and grandchildren.

Forty-four years after he started DALMAC, bicycles have become more accepted on roads, but there is still a ways to go, he said.

"Sometimes, I'm amazed at the progress and sometimes I'm disgusted by the lack of it," he said. "We need more bicycle lanes. I think it's particularly a problem in communities where you cannot ride your bike to school safely. We need designated routes."

Allen said he has always viewed bicycles as a form of transportation. But many people use them for recreation. And that's become a big part of the DALMAC experience.

"You see a Michigan that many people don't get to see," said Burris. "If you get on your bicycle on a rural road, you see things you don't see in your car. There's beautiful country around Boyne Mountain. You see and experience a lot of things that you don't if your only goal is to get from here to there."